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Parental Saliva on Pacifier may reduce children's allergy risk

11 May 2013

American Thoracic Society news, 6th of May, 2013

'The New York Times (5/6, O'Connor) "Well" blog reports, "In a study published Monday in
the journal Pediatrics,scientists report that infants whose parents sucked on their pacifiers to
clean them developed fewer allergies than children whose parents typically rinsed or boiled them."

MedPage Today (5/6, Neale) reports, "At age 18 months, children born to parents who
said they cleaned their child's pacifier with their mouths were less likely than those born to
parents who cleaned the pacifier in other ways to have asthma (odds ratio 0.12, 95% CI
0.01 to 0.99) and eczema (OR 0.37, 95% CI 0.15 to 0.91)," Swedish investigators found.
"At age 36 months, the association remained for eczema (HR 0.51, 95% CI 0.26 to 0.98),
but not for asthma, the researchers reported." Reuters (5/6, Pittman) also covers the story.'